"VC Primer From An Entrepreneur's Pov"

Tom Evslin has a great series on fundraising from an entrepreneur's point of view. All three of his posts are below.

Since I wrote about my ViewPlus days in the post prior, I'm cracking up recalling some of our fundraising experiences. My co-founder Jimmy was pitching our startup in front of four general partners, and one of them asked, "Why should we invest in you guys versus your competitors?"

Jimmy looked at him sternly and emphatically replied, "Look, do you want to drive a BMW or a Hyundai?..." After that meeting, our funding was approved and we got a signed term sheet of $33 million. I was still laughing for a few days afterwards because of what Jimmy said in his typical animated manner.

VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV – Source of Funds

If you’re an experienced entrepreneur who’s had venture funding, skip these posts. If you’re a VC, please read on and tell me if I got anything wrong but remember that I’m writing from an entrepreneur’s point of view. If you’re an entrepreneur who hasn’t had VC funding – even a wannabe entrepreneur – read on. These posts are for you. (full post)

VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV – The Funds

Most venture firms are general partners running one or more funds whose money is supplied by limited partners (aka investors aka LPs). In a previous post, I talked about three other types of types of VC fund you might find yourself dealing with; but, in this post, we’ll concentrate on this type because, if you’re an entrepreneur raising VC money, you’re almost sure to deal with a firm like this. You need to understand how their funds work. (full post)

VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV – What About Angels?

Angel investors go where venture capitalists fear to tread. That’s an oversimplification but it’ll do for starters.

You’re a wannabe entrepreneur. You have a great idea. To go any further with your idea you need some money. Let’s say you’re gonna need to quit your day job but that you did build a prototype of your great idea on nights and weekends. You figure you need somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 to live on, to hire come contractors to do some programming, and to do a little bit of marketing. These being the days they are, you don’t think that hosting or Internet access bills will be significant until your service really grows and starts to bring in business on its own so you’re not worried about those bills. You already own all the computers you’ll need for a while and you’re planning to work at home so no office space to worry about. Your spouse is OK with all of this… sorta. (full post)